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The Major is a perfectionist. The significance of his interest in grammar has to do with bettering something you already believe you know how to do. It was a challenge, a challenge to be better.

"One day I had said that Italian seemed such an easy language to me that I could not take a great interest in it; everything was so easy to say. "Ah, yes," the major said. "Why, then, do you not take up the use of grammar?" So we took up the use of grammar, and soon Italian was such a difficult language that I was afraid to talk to him until I had the grammar straight in my mind."